Crews working to restore power to thousands of NC homes after winter weather
A system of freezing rain moving across the mid-Atlantic United States left nearly 200,000 homes without power across North Carolina over the weekend — with tens of thousands still in the dark on Valentine’s Day.
As of Sunday afternoon, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said crews were still working to restore power to about 80,000 homes after winter weather took down trees and power lines in the Triad and in counties along the North Carolina-Virginia border. At its peak Saturday morning, the governor’s office said, 194,000 homes were without power.
“Utility workers are out in force, working to get everyone’s power restored as quickly as possible,” Cooper said in a press release Sunday.
Downed trees and lines also continued to keep some roads closed over the weekend in Triad-area counties, including U.S. Route 158 and N.C. Highway 150, near Summerfield in Guilford County, and U.S. Route 220 Business, near Stoneville in Rockingham County.
Officials with the N.C. Department of Transportation are urging drivers to be cautious on the roads and to watch out for downed trees and intersections with traffic signals affected by outages. And the governor’s office warned patches of black ice are possible for the commute Monday morning where accumulated rainfall refreezes overnight.
The National Weather Service in Raleigh expects more bands of rain to sweep across central North Carolina Sunday afternoon, with precipitation expected to range between 1/4 inch in the northwest part of the state to 3/4 inch in the southeast. And more wet weather is on the way, with forecasts projecting showers through at least the middle of the week.